Rupi's Dance

Ian Anderson | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 19, 2003)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Varese Sarabande
• ASIN: B0000AVHCI
• In-Print Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (55 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #76,039 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ian at his most urbane., January 10, 2005

By 

Joseph Kimsey "Fareastnibelung" (Pac NW) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rupi's Dance (Audio CD)

This disc will always leave me with wonderful memories. It was during this period that I got to meet Ian Anderson personally at a Wild About Cats charity event a year ago in San Francisco. Needless to say that the man is a charming host, but don't chat him up before a performance.

These compositions are uniformly excellent, and they display Anderson as more the composer and arranger, and (much) less the rock frontman. Calliandra Shade is the most infectious song Anderson has written in a long time, while Lost In Crowds finds Ian at his most revealing. A Raft of Penguins is a delight, as is the jazzy groove of A Week of Moments. A Hand of Thumbs and Griminelli's Lament are both haunting compositions, while Eurology is Ian at his most puckish. Two Short Planks bares a passing resemblance to Thick As A Brick, and Old Black Cat is overwhelmingly sad.

Ian Anderson has morphed from Tramp to Minstrel, then to rock's Country Squire, to the dreaded "elder statesman" role, and finally as an urbane gentleman with a sharp eye on the world's absurdities. I think that I like this incarnation the best.

Incidentally, you can ignore at least half of the negative reviews for Rupi's Dance posted here on Amazon. It's merely one cretin who's submitting nearly all of the bad reviews, and this person does the same on a lot of other Tull releases.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ian triumphs once more, February 22, 2004

By 

Paul A Durso (Raleigh, NC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rupi's Dance (Audio CD)

Those of us who follow Jethro Tull have always yearned for a CD of the more "acoustic" side of Tull. With Ian at the helm, you knew there would be a snippet here and there in the Tull repertoire, but the best JT songs encompassed the band as a whole. As a follow-on to "Secret Language of Birds", Ian has shown once again the magical essence that is at the center of the band, but more so his personal musical genius. Highlights include "Lost in Crowds" (possibly Ian's confession of not wanting to stand out as a celebrity) and "A Raft of Penguins" (his musings on playing with a symphony orchestra and the perils a rock musician might encounter in doing so). Ian Anderson paints wonderful musical pictures of his life experiences and observations and this CD depicts some of those beautifully. The mix of lyrics, music, and voice are delivered in a way that any music lover would enjoy. This Tull/Ian fan highly recommends it ... but the uninitiated will be quick fans themselves after just a listen or two. Cheerio ... PD

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, and maybe even better than SLOB, September 10, 2003

By 

John S. Ryan "Scott Ryan" (Cuyahoga Falls, OH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Rupi's Dance (Audio CD)

Probably the best things that ever happened to Ian Anderson's music were his move to the country and his purchase of a salmon farm. Ever since the mid-1970s, he's had an independent source of income and hasn't been tied to the fickle tastes of musical fashion. As a result he's been free to make quite a lot of excellent music without either the usual market influences or the creativity-stifling pressure of depending on his tunesmithing for his bread and butter. Go right ahead and consider those lilies, folks, but there's something to be said for investing wisely.

This CD, as no doubt every reader of this page knows, is very much in the same spirit as _The Secret Language of Birds_, in that it consists mostly of Ian singing and playing flutes and acoustic guitars.

The songwriting is every bit as excellent as on _SLOB_, and possibly even just a smidgen better (if that's possible). There's a delightful mix here: several cats, some other animals, some coffee, a couple of lovely instrumental pieces, a touch of "world beat", and the occasional bit of schoolboy humor ("Eurology"? hee hee). There are also some nice photos of Ian posing grimly with his flute.

There are also some guest musicians (notably but not only Leslie Mandoki, who sits in on several tracks; Anderson recently appeared on one of his releases as well).

Anderson's voice is in good shape, his flauting has never been more liquid, and his guitar work is delicately filigreed. (Incidentally, some of the songs are played on an 1880-vintage C.F. Martin guitar.)

There's also a "bonus" track from Jethro Tull's forthcoming Christmas album. The preview is nice to have. (It would be easy to get cynical here and treat the track as a simple marketing ploy, but the fact is that any of us who buy one of these CDs would have bought the other anyway.)

Bottom line: if you know this CD exists, you should probably already have bought it. If you haven't, why not?